Thanksgiving Turkey Beard (nothing had to die for)
07:32AM Nov 27, 2008 in category 
by George W Frink
Turkey Beard sans gobble, this one bloomed sweet-smelling almost three decades ago in a burned-over Cumberland County, N.C., glade.
Claude W. Rankin.com, named for the late photographer who made the image, explains:
Enjoy this one, and if it is not too late, perhaps you can give thanks in part by letting another gobbling and befeathered creature live to grow old.The eastern turkey beard's dense clusters of creamy, starlike flowers bloom from May to July.
Flowering on stalks two to three feet high, they are tough, elegant lilies. Their lovely flowers have a sweet nectar that attracts insects and hummingbirds.
The plant is sometimes called beargrass, because in spring bears seek out and eat the roots and tender young leaves.
...Fire-control practices have helped make them hard to find in some areas. In the absence of a fire, relatively few turkey beard plants produce flowers each year.
The Naional Geographic reports that after a fire, however, they need only a year to recover before blooming.
NatureServe, a non-profit conservation organization, reports that they are ranked "vulnerable" in North Carolina and Tennessee. They are ranked as critically imperiled in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia. They are believed to have disappeared from Delaware and perhaps from Kentucky.
Native to North Carolina, they are also found in the pine barrens of New Jersey, and the Appalachian woods of Virginia to Georgia and Alabama. The photograph on this page was taken in Cumberland County, N.C.
Frink
